>
>Doesn't this contribute to my point?!? "Childhood" is invented to conceal the
>a specific social-historical lack. Ie - childhood is an imaginary category
>which has become near foundational for 'western' society --> from voting,
>drinking, driving and prosecution.
oh come on ken dearest one. childhood is invented.... there is a lack? what the fuck lack is that? lack? is that what aries was saying? that's there's a lack and childhoof fills it? hey wot?!
this is a functionalist argument.
why is childhood invented--if it is. is it really "invented"? there are *conditions* under which there can be something we call childhood. that matters.
> > Historicize The Thing!
>
>Of corset! [diva victoria]
>
>
>Kell wrote:
>
> > appeal to the rhetorical strategy: "look! see how it speaks to our
> cultural
>expressions. look there and here and over there. lacan is getting at the
>same
>experiences as the paleolithic wall carving, the figures etched in the
>pottery,
>the legends, the rennaissance fairy tales, the 20th c film.... SEE. it's
>got
>to be true!"
>
> > don't sit well with me, particularly when it's coming from someone who
>despises Jung!
>
>I'm stunned, Yoshie and Kell seem to agree in their disagreement with me -
>that
>I'm guilty of promoting trans/a/non-historical analyses. As much as I'd like
>for them to both be correct, and sign a treaty of reciprocity and agreement,
>both attribute to me a mistaken premise and a false conclusion.
well no, i wasn't saying that at all. i was just pointing out that i think you made a weak argument for lacanian theory. i don't think it's adequate to point to literature, art, poetry, film and say that lacan must be on to something because you can see the same things in those cultural artefacts. as if "seeing" what you see is somehow objective or just plain there? that makes n o sense whatsoever. if i have to be absolutely cognizant of the problems with various forms of empiricist positivism--from number crunch survey research to navel gazing ethnography to lint picking pomo textual analyses, then i guess you need to be equally carefully.
> My frame of reference isn't
>objectivistic, it's invertentionist.
i shouldn't. really. it's not fair. oh what the hay!
THIS IS HILARIOUS. what a piece of slippage. it's beautiful ken. just beautiful. i think i'm going to drift off into a frenzy of hypervetilation and have a smoke later after i'm sated.
>Regarding the false conclusion, that these kinds of analyses are
>ahistorical. I
>have a feeling that it won't matter what I write, but here goes:
>
>Researching history is a bit like a detective novel, you know the kind, where
>everyone knows a murder has been committed but no one can find the body...
>well... history is like that. We all know (in the most profound
>epistemological
>sense) "history happens" but we don't have the body, we've got symptoms,
>clues
>or excesses. So we create a body (representations) in its (ultimate) absence.
>In doing so we occilate around the missing body by taking up a variety of
>positions (historian, sociologist, proletariat and so on) in relation to its
>absence. Each of these positions is imagined. In the worse cases, we imagine
>ourselves to be the body of history looking outward (historicism,
>objectivism,
>positivism).
hmmmm. i smell functionalism here. bleh.
>We can ask ourselves whether or not any of these perspectives make
>a difference in our ability to represent the past. But there is a hidden
>paradox in the question. The question: can we represent the past assumes that
>there is a Past to represent - but that's precisely the problem! (if we take
>the question literally: then we end up with a kind of theoretical paranoia
>-->
>History [capital H] is hiding on me!). The smuggled premise here seems to
>be that there is a Past (capital P) that we can or can't get at through
>studying "history." However, there is no Past, that's the dilemma (in
>Lacanian
>terms: History is Real). The body does not exist (if existence is "for us").
>The more appropriate question might be: to what extend can contingency
>("our clues") become aware of itself withoult losing sight of the fact that
>this insight itself is still contingent? What this means, essentially, is
>that
>we recreate the semblance (unity) of the past through its pieces. This is we
>generally call meaning - which denotes an objective absence (ie. meaning does
>not exist, it is always imagined, we might say meaning is always
>nonobjectively
>present in language). In short --> history is imagined, but our imagining of
>history is dependent upon clues.
>
>Now, I'm pretty sure someone is thinking: so Ken, history is all imagined,
>right? So it doesn't exist? Reality doesn't exist? Eh? Huh? What?
>
>That's not what I'm saying. The "stuff" of history is *material* - things,
>objects, objective reality. This "stuff" is what makes the creation of
>meaning
>possible (and necessary). We don't have clues without material - and in the
>production of meaning there is always an excess: meaning itself is
>*transformed* into the materiality of history (what we think / do about the
>clues becomes the missing body of history). We write about the missing
>body, we
>shape our lives by it, but we also put "ideas" into material (why are
>ceilings
>the height that they are? why do we have men's and women's washrooms?). In a
>way, our very seach for the missing body *is* the body of history. The reason
>we can't find it is because it is us! (this is, I think, what it means to be
>embedded and embodied / historically effected).
>
>And, so as to avoid the criticism that will come, THIS SAYS NOTHING.
>There, now
>I can't be accused of anything more than being a blathering idiot.
that's pretty much all carrol and yoshie's criticisms amount to. yes. you're right.
my problem is that you, the lacanian, take up the position of telling eveyone else what they're "really" doing. now, that's not so bad if you insist on an objectivist epistemology. but you're not. so you're fucked. just as fucked as everyone you're criticizing.
you can be smug about it. you can pull an awwwww shucks jiss lil ole me rorty number.
but, in the end, you're just piddling along same as the rest of us.
kelley
>ken
>
>"Memory... is just dead men making trouble" - Cowboy Junkies